


oh, me? well i'm the life of the party

by trees_so_thin



Category: The Adventure Zone (Podcast)
Genre: First Kiss, thats all i got buddy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-12
Updated: 2020-08-12
Packaged: 2021-03-06 04:00:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,682
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25857040
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/trees_so_thin/pseuds/trees_so_thin
Summary: college-sanctioned party on a school night.fitzroy opens up. argo closes down.
Relationships: Argo Keene/Sir Fitzroy Maplecourt
Comments: 7
Kudos: 50





	oh, me? well i'm the life of the party

**Author's Note:**

> finally. something normal is at the top of my works. i started this at 2am then fell asleep which is probably why the writing changes halfway through i think. its fine. points if you can figure out where this is supposed to go in the timeline (and no i dont know where it fits in the timeline of the actual podcast i forgot about what happened last episode ive been running on my own canon for months)

Fitzroy escapes the party, leaving the multicoloured lights and dull thud of music behind him as he leans against the wall to cool his aching head and buzzing ears.   
“Are ya… doing alright? “  
He doesn't even bother to turn at the sound of Argo’s voice over his shoulder.   
“No. Just a bit overloaded. I'll be fine.“  
Argo hums a little tune to the beat of the track now playing in the room beyond. “Sorry t’hear that.”  
“Don't - it's fine, Argo, I just can't handle all the noise.“  
A little ashamed that he made Fitzroy snap at him, Argo steps away slightly. A brief moment passes between them in the hall, dimly lit from residual party lights. They illuminate Fitzroy's face with a mottled pattern; throwing into sharp contrast the lines around his mouth, far too detailed for his age, that show clearly when he sets his jaw.   
He looks tired.  
And defeated.   
And sad.  
“I've never been to a party,” Fitzroy muses.   
That's something that intrigues Argo; he'd assumed the vain, charismatic half elf would have been quite the social butterfly before he came to Wiggenstaff’s, even despite his social background.   
“I been to plenty,“ he starts, unsure of what he was trying to say, knowing how his mouth runs when he's nervous.   
Which is to say, all the time.   
“On the ship. I was normally sent to bed before the *big* ragers ever started up, but me ma would often sneak me in. Givin' me a taste of th’ life, she called it. “  
He smiles sadly into the paper cup he had brought with him, filled with orange juice (provided only at his request, nobody else was going to drink it). “And like, after that too… yeah. ”  
He rests his back on the wall, mirroring Fitzroy. He's standing so close he can feel the anxious body heat radiating from Fitzroy, now standing to the left of him.   
They stand there, dead silent, for a good while; the atmosphere is uncomfortable and sharp, but Fitzroy eventually speaks up.  
“Nobody liked me at Clyde Nite’s.“  
Fitzroy’s voice is small, but strong, with no sign of wavering. Something tells Argo he's thought about this a lot and is past the point of _feeling_ about it, but not quite the point of _caring._  
“They all called me names being my back. And laughed at me. Nobody ever talked to me. I was invisible apart from ridicule. So I've never been to a party.“  
That's something that catches Argo. For whatever reason he'd never considered that Fitzroy wasn't liked at his old school. Sure, he was a dickhead at the best of times, but Argo had never not liked him as a person. It was odd to think that he had once been bullied.   
“I thought you would have been… a- a big shot at old… night knight night school. “  
“Ha.”  
He sounds bitter.   
“Not really. But I didn't really care anyway. I had good grades in most things. I was excelling. I was good at studying, good at training. I was going to be a good knight.  
“But the magic fucked it all up and now I have nothing.“  
The air is hard to breathe, or maybe that's just Argo’s throat constricting with emotion. He's not sure what emotion exactly - he tries to make sure it's not pity, he thinks Fitzroy would probably hate that-- but he can't really think of what else it might be.   
It’s not anything deeper than that.  
He tells himself that, at least.

“At Clyde Nite’s I had ambition, and promise. I was going to be a knight. I was going to have a purpose.   
And now what do I have? I have a shitty crab, and a shitty benefactor, and a shitty WAR and a shitty FUCKING life. I've got nothing.”

“You… you got friends, though. Now.”

That hangs in the space between them.   
Argo doesn't dare look at Fitzroy.   
Fitzroy feels a weird twinge in his gut, but he ignores it.

“Everything’s fucked. I’m not the person I was trying to be. I have to be a villain now if I want to get anywhere. My magic is out of control. And still I’m invisible except to people who want to use me for something.”

The hallway spins in the dark, although it's just refraction from the party lights shining out one window and into the one nearest to them.   
Argo crooks his head a little, suddenly feeling bold by the disorientation of the lights. The multicoloured pinpricks are glittering across Fitzroy’s face like the tears tracked down his cheeks.   
He cautiously moves his hand over an inch and places it on top of Fitzroy's.   
Argo just wants to comfort the barbarian, but the touch of skin on skin and the anxiety he’s already dealing with mixes in together to form a strange concoction of fear and confidence, and his brain races a mile ahead to a potential action he could take right now if he’s brave.

“I just wanted to be a good knight.”

“....you still are, to me.”

Fitzroy doesn’t respond.  
Heart racing, Argo takes his chance before the courage escapes him. 

Argo kisses Fitzroy for the first time, and it's soft and salty and clumsy, but Fitzroy doesn't pull away. He lets it happen, and an extra tear spills out from under his closed eyelid.   
Argo doesn't want to break the moment.   
He wills time to stretch on forever, frozen in this one specific frame. No matter if his neck is craned weirdly and it hurts, or if Fitzroy is stepping on his foot a little- he can’t feel it at all. The only thing filling Argo is a simple, warm joy that Fitzroy didn’t fight him or push him away.  
In fact, Fitzroy is pushing forward, taking it further, stepping in front of Argo and pushing him up against the wall- which takes Argo by surprise, but he goes along with it eagerly, slipping his hand into Fitzroy’s front jeans pocket and pulling the half elf’s hips and body a little closer against his own.  
The next few seconds -minutes? -hours? -stretch and blur together for Argo, gone in an instant, while the opposite happens for Fitzroy, sharply aware of every millisecond he spends pressed against the genasi’s mouth, unsure of what he’s doing but feigning confidence in his actions anyway, spurred on by some alien _need_ to remove himself from his problems and lose himself in the other man.  
It’s over too soon for the both of them, and Argo breaks away with a gasp, a wide, goofy grin spreading across his face along with a deep blush. Fitzroy ignores the rising heat he can feel in his own cheeks, choosing instead to train his eyes on the dangling earring hanging from the bottom of Argo’s fin-like ear, his concentration so intense that his gaze defocuses to the point that he can no longer bear to bring his eyes back into clarity or blink.

“I don't want to talk about it,” Fitzroy says quietly as he comes back into touch with this body, aware of how closely he and Argo are standing together, almost in an embrace -he considers for a second actually completing the embrace, but nerves get the better of him, and he simply shifts his wrist to better brace himself against the wall and not crush Argo.  
“T-that’s fine,” Argo replies, stunned, nearly speechless, not quite sure what just happened, but pretty damn happy about it anyway.  
“I- I may not want to EVER bring this up in conversation at all, ever, again or for the first time, but I- uh, I won’t- I will not um…..Argue if it, say, happens a-again.”  
That seems to be where Fitzroy wants to leave it for now, and Argo isn’t going to combat that decision; so he stays where he is and studies the big painting on the opposite wall, his keen (haha) eyes tracing the bumps and ridges of the oil paint that were still visible. He wants to look at Fitzroy and admire his handsome face while it’s (probably) appropriate to do so, but the idea of looking at him after what just happened makes him more nervous.

“Y...y’won’t?”  
“I won’t what?”  
“Y’said you wouldn't argue if it uh, happened again.”  
“Oh. Well…….I mean, yeah, I guess.”   
Nervousness swelling again in his chest, disrupting him internally like a rock dropped in deep water, Argo tears his eyes away from the painting and shuts them quickly, unable to face himself as he swiftly kisses Fitzroy again. He doesn’t linger too long this time, but he tries to imprint the sensation in his mind just in case he never gets to do it again.  
“Sorry.”  
“It’s fine,” Fitzroy mumbles into Argo’s mouth, not wanting him to stop- he feels calm and light, the sensory overload and thunderous headache he was nursing all but gone. He breaks the kiss anyway, sensing that Argo is getting uncomfortable somehow, and sheepishly returns to where he was standing beside the genasi before.

Argo holds his hand again.

Without hesitation this time.

Fitzroy somehow feels closer to his sidekick, and yet terribly far away from him. He isn’t sure if he regrets opening up like that, and he’s not quite positive that he made the right move in letting that kiss happen, but as the party lights out the window turn blue-green and spiral in the window and across the wall, he finally feels a sense of belonging where he stands, for one brief moment. Maybe, just this one time, he has something.   
Maybe, this one time, he hasn’t had something taken away.

The door at the end of the hallway bursts open as the rest of the students stream out of the dance hall, loud and babbling, ready to retire for the night or move on to more afterparties. The last strains of music are dying down feebly, and Fitzroy and Argo separate and merge themselves into the crowd, pretending nothing ever happened.  
They could pretend, but they knew.   
They were fine with that.


End file.
